


Roots

by Deanon



Category: Novus Arx
Genre: F/M, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-10
Updated: 2014-09-10
Packaged: 2018-02-16 20:29:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2283519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deanon/pseuds/Deanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His legs are roots and she is a forest fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kayotics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayotics/gifts).



He leaves Viv, and discovers that he can’t leave Viv.

* * *

 

“Come with me,” he says, and means it, _means_ it. He means it with everything in himself, and she has to come, she has to come _now_ or they’ll run out of time.

She stares down at him, and her eyes are sharp, and cold, the way they had only ever been when he’d _really_ messed up, when they’d almost gotten caught, when he’d tried to kiss her first. It feels like she’s already said no and she hasn’t opened her mouth yet, and then he’s begging.

“Please,” he says. Is he kneeling? He might be kneeling. He’s not sure why else Vivianne would be so much taller than him. “Please, you have to come with me, we can start somewhere else, you can teach somewhere else, we have to leave before my brother gets here because he can, he can, he thinks you’re taking advantage of me – “

He tries to say it like a joke but it comes out sounding choked, half-breathless. She doesn’t believe him. She doesn’t believe him.

“I don’t love you,” she says, like a strike of lightning.

 _That wasn’t how it happened_ , he thinks, and wakes up.

He lays there, heart pounding, sick and hurting and aching to become a tree.

(He has that dream a few dozen times, and every time Vivianne doesn’t say all the things she did before, _I have a family_ and _You know people will judge me_ and _Did you really think_?

She says _I don’t love you_ , and it’s all that matters.)

* * *

 

At first, he doesn’t dream of the times they had sex at all. First he’s too shell-shocked, sick at even the thought of her skin and sick at the thought of being without it; and then too busy running and finding one-night-stands at bars and running some more. The dreams that he does have are vague blurs of color and scent, hinting at her identity only because she is so intrinsically tied with sex in his mind that he doesn’t think the bond will ever come undone.

And then he retreats to the forest, and the dreams come in full force, nearly every night, in cruel and vivid detail.

He dreams of her taking him in every way that she ever did; he dreams of static in his fingertips and the teacher’s lounge late at night, wakes up aching and trembling again from the risk of it. He dreams of her taste and her skin and, endlessly, her hair, her voice.

He dreams of taking her in ways he was never allowed to; over her desk; in her house. Those ones burn, fiercely; they remind him of things left undone, things he could have had if he hadn’t destroyed what he had. He hates himself after those, hates the times he never got to touch her because of his own weakness.

Sometimes he dreams of her husband – a shadowy figure even though Toivo met him several times – fucking her, like he was allowed to, with no shame and no clue of Toivo’s existence - and he wakes up feeling as sick with shame and jealousy as he was when they were together.

He dreams of kissing her, sometimes. Just kissing her, for hours, and hours, the way he always wanted to, the way she never let him.

He drinks her in like he is in a desert and she is a mirage, and he wakes up to lush greenery feeling _empty_ in a way that makes him envy the rootedness of the forest.

He dreams of vague pleasure and hearing her voice in his ear, crystal clear _, I love you_.

He hates his brain for making these things up.

* * *

 

Her hair smells like summer and the kind of spice you find deep in the forest, and he draws in a deep breath before she pulls away from him, laughing slightly.

“Come on, Toy,” she says, resting comfortably in his arms. “You’re sweet, but we’re going to be late for the festival.” The midsummer’s eve festival, of course; he suddenly remembers that she’s leading a group of students there while he watches –

“Can you go get Travis?” Vivianne asks as she’s pulling away, but lingering. Her fingers brush his hand before she breaks contact altogether, but it’s nearly worth it to be able to see her properly; she is in a sundress, her hair loose, light from the window shining on her skin. She is so lovely it makes him _ache_. “He should be in the backyard, I have to grab supplies for my students.” She steals another kiss before she strides out, confident that he can handle wrangling –

He’s in the backyard, calling, “Travis!”, and the little boy – his face sharp despite how few times Toivo met him – comes running, his limbs flailing. He’s covered in mud and Toivo laughs at it, even though he knows Vivianne will blame him for it. “What have you gotten into now? Go change, we’re leaving soon.”

“Yes Papa,” Travis says, and he beams, as though he _knows_ his dad doesn’t really disapprove, and even though Toivo has never _seriously_ considered children it just sounds so _right_ coming from a boy with Viv’s smile and dark hair.

Travis runs inside and Toivo’s about to follow him, but there’s suddenly a scamper of footsteps behind him, and he goes perfectly still before swooping around to scoop up –

“PAPA!　Papa, put me down!” A little girl, barely 3 years old, shrieks with laughter in his arms, and everything goes very still for a moment, because he was expecting Alice, but this girl was –

She had Viv’s eyes, Viv’s sharp nose, Viv’s laugh; but, poor girl, she had –

His hair.

“Papa,” his daughter, Vivianne’s daughter, their daughter, says, “Papa, are we going to the festival now?”

He wakes up.

* * *

 

It is the first time he nearly leaves the forest, because he meditates all day and he still can’t get rid of the way Vivianne’s hair looked in sunlight or the way his mind created the voice of their _daughter_.

What if she’s _real_?

It’s the first time he nearly goes back.

* * *

 

He dreams of things that never were so many times that he loses count.

It doesn’t seem like it’s getting easier, but sometimes he goes back to sleep, and it’s enough.

* * *

 

“Mr. Kissa,” Vivianne’s voice says.

He feels it like electrocution, because he _knows_ that voice and he knows that it only happens when he has messed up, messed up badly, so badly that every time she says it she nearly leaves him and he is ready to start apologizing already but she doesn’t like it when he does that, so he says, “Yes, ma’am?”

She is looming over his desk. The rest of the class has gone deadly quiet, watching them, and he hates the attention. He hates her being this close with other people around because she only ever does it like _this_ , and he always wants her closer, kinder.

“Mr. Kissa,” she said, and her voice has gone low, so that the whole class leans in to hear. “You turned in an assignment yesterday?”

It’s a trick question. He knows it’s a trick question. He feels like a plant whose leaves are being threatened by a flame; leaning into the light and wilting from the horrible, burning heat. “Yes?” he whispers.

“Really,” she said, and a couple students let out quickly-stifled snickers. Shame curdles in his stomach. “Because I received a piece of paper with your name on it, _Mr. Kissa_ ” (he wants her to call him Toy again, he would give _anything_ , and he doesn’t even like the nickname but it’s better, it’s better), “But it was nothing like the work that I would expect from  you.” He is going to be sick. “It looked more like the work of some of my first years.” A couple of his classmates _do_ laugh at that. His face is burning. His hair is hanging over it, but he can feel Viv’s heat, even through that. “Is that the best that you can offer me?”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. She deserves more. She _always_ deserves more.

“Sorry isn’t enough,” she says. “Be _better_.”

“I’m trying,” he begs, and he knows it’s a mistake as soon as he’s said it. He braces himself; he feels like he’s falling before she even speaks a word because he _knows_ in the way she breaths, stands, that he has messed up.

“If this is you trying,” her voice is like nails, like molten metal, “then perhaps you should work with someone with lower standards. You will attend Mr. Sand’s class for the rest of the week.”

He feels the floor move beneath him. She’s kicking him out, she’s leaving, she’s ending it, and he snaps his eyes up to her and sees no warmth there. “Viv, no – “

His eyes go wide before hers do. He doesn’t call her Viv, not in class, not _ever_ , he can’t, he’s ruined it, if it wasn’t already broken beyond repair it is now and it’s his fault and he feels himself panic before she even opens her mouth, seized by such intense fear that he can’t even hear what she says as he scrambles backwards out of his chair and falls, falls –

He wakes up gasping and afraid and _angry_.

 _She shouldn’t have_ , he thinks, for the first time. _She was wrong_.

He is consumed by doubt almost immediately, but somewhere deep, he feels like a sprout that has broken the surface of the dirt.

* * *

 

He was never angry at Vivianne, not since the very beginning. If he let himself pull away even that much, she would leave, and he would collapse.

He is angry, sometimes, now, when he dreams of her.

He finds that this anger tastes like sunlight after a very long time in the dark; scary but _good_.

* * *

 

He dreams of his plant, sitting on Vivianne’s sill. He dreams of its leaves wilting and falling away, the way it had been on the verge of when he’d left it in her care once.

He wakes and the plant is thriving, lush, brighter now than it had ever been around Vivianne.

He waters it, and envies it.

* * *

 

Toivo wakes, and does not envy the trees.

Because he loves the forest, but when he gets up and walks away from it, he is glad to not have roots holding him down.

* * *

 

He wakes, and finds that he doesn’t remember his dreams.


End file.
